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The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

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Ein Fremder unter den Einheimischen, ein Einheimischer unter den Fremden: zur literarischen (Selbst)Repräsentation des nomadisierenden Subjekts

Jeremy Howard (School of Art History/University of St Andrews)
'Schottenstift: A quiet mix': Artists of the Scottish diaspora, their integration with and contribution to European Visual Culture

This paper examines questions of national identity, migration and integration with regard to three works by three artists of apparently mixed Scottish-German origin. The critical and historical reception of their work has been skewed by the complications imposed by their mixed blood, non-sedentary lives, and, perhaps foremost, by the nature of their art. All three 'cross-boundary' factors are analysed in an attempt to draw attention to the manipulative limitations of conventional art history as developed from the nineteenth century through the twentieth. The three artists in question, are Johann Georg Hamilton, painter of the 'Bear Hunt' for Prince Adam Franz Schwarzenberg (1713); James Pitcairn-Knowles, creator of Schloss Freudenberg, near Wiesbaden (1904); and Hermann Obrist, sculptor of the so-called Krupp Fountain (c.1910).

This paper focuses on individuals and work which do not correspond with fixed national typological norms. Its enquiry centres around the prevalence in art history of static concepts of locus and being which ignore the possibilities of alternative becoming or belonging. It questions the carriage of national traits in the visual expression of 'diasporic' artists within modern Europe.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES

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